Disaster Activists Are Trying To Force Mastercard To Cut Off Payments To The Far Right - The payment giant’s shareholders will vote on a proposal to set up a “human rights committee” at the company to monitor money flowing to hate groups.

http://archive.li/77Yh1
https://www.buzzfeed.com/markdistefano/mastercard-activists-cut-off-donations-far-right

Activists have successfully forced Mastercard to hold a vote by shareholders on a proposal which, if passed, could see the company monitoring payments to global far-right political leaders and white supremacist groups.

The proposal aims to see Mastercard establish an internal “human rights committee” that would stop designated white supremacist groups and anti-Islam activists, such as Tommy Robinson, from getting access to money sent from donors using the company’s card payment services.

It’s been conceived by US-based political activists SumOfUs, who want to escalate the battle against white supremacists and far-right groups from tech platforms like Facebook, Google, Twitter, Patreon, and PayPal to one of the biggest companies in world finance, in an attempt to choke off donations.



Robinson and several other leading figures in the global far right have been forced in recent months to solicit donations directly on their websites via Mastercard, Visa, and American Express after PayPal banned payments to them. Facebook also disabled the donation function on Robinson’s fan page before deleting it completely.

“Spreading hate involves spending money,” Eoin Dubsky, from SumOfUs, told BuzzFeed News. “Whether it’s paying for online advertising or organising violent rallies, white supremacist groups need financial services from companies like Mastercard.”

Over several months, SumOfUs has been locked in a battle with Mastercard executives behind the scenes in order to get the new committee proposal put to the shareholders ahead of the company’s June annual general meeting.

It would see the formation of a “human rights committee” at the board level, which would monitor financial transactions with designated hate groups.

Documents seen by BuzzFeed News reveal that the US Securities and Exchange Commission has given the green light for shareholders to get the chance to vote on the formation of the committee, despite staunch opposition from the Mastercard board and executives.

In the material to be sent to shareholders, the activists refer to a website called Blood Money, which tracks online payments to white supremacist groups from the likes of Mastercard, American Express, and Stripe. The website currently claims that Mastercard services are being used by groups like Counter-Currents Publishing, Covenant People’s Ministry, the United West, Sultan Knish, and the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation.

SumOfUs has also pointed to the activity of Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. The former English Defence League founder is running as an independent in May’s European election.

In November 2018, PayPal banned donations to the anti-Islam activist, with the online payment company saying that its services wouldn’t “be used to promote hate, violence, or other forms of intolerance that is discriminatory”.

More recently, Robinson has been calling on his global network of supporters to donate to his election campaign through his website, which allows payments from Mastercard.

“Having a Mastercard logo on their website also gives these groups a veneer of legitimacy, and allows those who want to donate to do so quickly and quietly,” Dubsky told BuzzFeed News.

“Mastercard also benefits, pocketing a transaction fee for each purchase or donation.”

Mastercard declined requests for comment, pointing instead to the board’s position laid out in the information sent to shareholders ahead of the general meeting.

“Mastercard is committed to treating all people fairly and with dignity, and our interest in human rights extends to all areas in which our business is involved and where we have particular expertise,” it reads. “The Board does not believe that establishing a separate human rights committee is necessary to properly exercise its oversight of this important area.”

It’s unclear whether the proposal stands a chance of succeeding at June’s meeting. But the move to confront such a big, mainstream company like Mastercard over issues like the funding of white supremacy and the far right comes after action from smaller, online financial platforms like PayPal and Patreon in the area.

PayPal has banned payments to Robinson, US far-right group Proud Boys, and Canadian anti-Islam activist Laura Loomer. It also acted against several US anti-fascist groups because the company had no tolerance for groups that promoted “hate” and “violence”.

Last year, Patreon banned YouTuber Sargon of Akkad over a 2015 video that featured the Gamergate leader repeatedly saying the n-word in a Google Hangout with the alt-right. According to the New York Times, Sargon of Akkad, whose real name is Carl Benjamin, had 3,000 subscribers and was being paid $12,000 a month on Patreon when he was removed from the site.

In a recent YouTube video, Benjamin and Robinson talked about being de-platformed by social media companies. But Robinson also suggested that he has long-term fears beyond the big tech companies.

“I am being completely un-personed,” Robinson said. “What’s next—my mobile-phone contract?”

 

[TerribleIdeas™]

Talking American Antifa here.

I only consider AntiFa Medic (1C) Zoe Quinn, and her pack of soy-soaked degenerates a danger to my person if they've started to swarm, at which time bear spray will be deployed and used.

 

[Manah]

There really isn't a conservative situation from an economic standpoint for dealing with the tech companies. But they are not behaving like corporations out for profit anymore but rather as political actors and there are solutions for dealing with political enemies.

Mastercard doesn't have political enemies you fucking moron, they're chasing politics for money, not the other way around.

 

[pwnest injun]

One difference between tech companies and MasterCard is that MasterCard is supposed to make money, whereas tech companies lose money hand over fist while idiot rich people just pour more and more money into them.

 

[Marissa Moira]

So essentially they want it to be that you have these big huge tech companies and financial corporations now ruling over everyone and in order to regain your freedom you have to go underground and have a hidden network in order to try and circumvent these masters?

Guess the democrats really are pining for the days of the Plantation.

 

[Unog]

And now you sound like raymond.

Many in "the right" aren't talking of boycotting tech companies en masse because for many reasons, that many have recognized, said boycotts wouldn't amount to much. Getting the normies to get on the boycott, finding suitable alternatives, making sure said alternatives don't get crippled or squashed by the cartel that is Big Tech.

And many on the right actually are promoting or even creating alternative platforms, like Bitchute, Minds.com, Dick Masterson's Patreon-esque service. You apparently weren't paying attention.

Even Dick is one of these types of people, when it comes to twitter.

Right-wingers use Twitter to engage with their followers. When Twitter fucks with right-wingers, they have less ability to engage with their followers.

Most people (in this context) use Twitter, because Twitter is a mainstream platform, so to not use Twitter is to create less engagement with your followers still.

Even Null still uses Twitter, for Christ's sake. And it's to engage with his followers too.

It is also hard to get normies, relatively normie e-celebs, or anyone of notice to alternative platforms, which is what makes them grow in the first place. You don't just want Twitter rejects. Otherwise, you just get another Gab or Mastadon.

Those alternative platforms also have to get past the tech oligopoly.

So the major problem is figuring out how to break up the power of big tech companies.

It's just yet more excuse making to avoid the uncomfortable fact that none of them want to fully make the crossover because they don't want to either take the hit to the bottom line that would be using existing alternative options, and/or not drawing in the same amount of attention that they'd get using these services which is tied into other right-wingers not living up to their own beliefs on the issue.

Even Dick has complained about this in regards to people like JBP and Dave Rubin bitching and moaning about how awful Patreon is in the wake of them banning Sargon yet being completely unwilling to make the move over to his NP2 platform. Which is hilarious that he'd bitch about that since, as I said, it's functionally the same as him bitching and moaning about twitter when Gab exists yet he'll find any excuse he can not to use it instead of twitter.

What do you think the right should do about the big tech companies?

As one myself, I think it's a matter of a few options:

1: Chase down the notion that the initial startup of many of these companies was handed to them in part by the government, and have them live up to the fact that they aren't exactly "private companies doing as they want" by making government legislation hold them to account in a manner compatible with the constitution. For the record, I personally think this is the most fucktarded route to go with.

2: Follow the fact that these companies want to ban folks and edit posts over non-illegal offenses to it's logical conclusion that they, in doing so, are opening themselves up to being considered "publishers" (or curators, or whatever) and threaten them with the legal consequences of such a ruling in a court of law, which would be having them lose their safe harbor provisions - which would effectively fuck them over.

3: Actually live up to the shit they want to spew, stop using these services, and start using the alternatives that presently exist.

 

[QI 541]

This isn't a Wamart banking licenses are granted by the federal government and can be revoked for misuse or abuse. The problem is there's no political will because politicans from both parties recieve kickbacks from these same entities.

True, now try telling that to economic conservatives.

Government protects these "private corporations" from competition.

20 years ago conservatives would have been cheering these private corporations on as examples of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.

 

[Dante Alighieri]

20 years ago conservatives would have been cheering these private corporations on as examples of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.

Wanna know how I know you're dumb?

True, now try telling that to economic conservatives.

Yeah. You're economically illiterate and always have the shittiest leftist takes on everything.

Economic conservatives don't support said government interventions in the market.

 

[AnOminous]

Shit, it's worse than I thought. I know there are many who would state that private entity's can do what they want since it's their business but the ethics in it is clearly not there plus stuff like this can be so easily abused to silence just about anyone.

It's not really a private entity in the normal sense of the world when it's some "too big to fail" monstrosity that couldn't even exist without the guarantee that the taxpayers will bail them out when their executives steal all the money and bankrupt it.

 

[QI 541]

Wanna know how I know you're dumb?

Yeah. You're economically illiterate and always have the shittiest leftist takes on everything.

Economic conservatives don't support said government interventions in the market.

Well I was implying that economic conservatives were filthy sociopathic hypocrites who don't really understand how the modern world works and only selectively recognize government intervention but I guess that went over your head.

 

[Medicated]

There really isn't a conservative situation from an economic standpoint for dealing with the tech companies. But they are not behaving like corporations out for profit anymore but rather as political actors and there are solutions for dealing with political enemies. For example, we could pass a constitutional amendment that declares social media to be the public square and access to the internet a basic right.

Barring that there is also the really conservative solution for dealing with the tech companies that involve hemp rope and helicopter rides over the Pacific ocean.

I think it's due to massive monopoly of loosely affiliated corporations that allows the free market to act this way. You pretty much have no choice to use the major companies that in bed with each other informally. You go to make a competitor? You can be squeezed out of the market because they are the ones that decide where you ads go, if they even appear, if you are allowed paypal, if you get good reviews and social media coverage. They don't have to worry about money, because there's no competition, if they see something they could use, they buy it out. I think that's why they are now quasi government entities, shaping political social policy, there's no competition to worry about, they are free to mold the world as they see fit.


They control all the pathways in for a possible competitor. Only China, thanks to it's language barrier and isolationism could build enough corporate capital to take them on directly.

 

[Alec Benson Leary]

Mastercard doesn't have political enemies you fucking moron, they're chasing politics for money, not the other way around.

That's academically true, but it's a bit like saying that an armory made shells for the nazi military just because the nazis paid well, but they didn't give a shit about the nazi ideology. To the rest of us, the outcome is the same. They're bad guys who will hurt us (and real innocent people, like the slaves who make Nike's shoes while Nike can still process payments) for profit.

 

[Dracula's Spirit Animal]

• Sharing a video of some autist shooting up a mosque will radicalize other shooters
• Calling white people subhuman is acceptable
• Blaming white people for all your problems is rightthink
• Silencing free speech from the right will stop that thinking
• Chasing everyone right of Mao off social media will make the world safer
• Twisting the knife by depriving those of a different political view from making a living and surviving could not possibly have a downside

For everything else, there's Mastercard

How these nitwits think this won't all end in unbeforeseen violence in the Western World if they get their way is beyond me.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

If only the Republicans hadn't forgotten Teddy Roosevelt and the original Progressives (most all Republicans) who smacked down all the trusts to begin with.

 

[MirrorNoir]

Must hippies turned out ok after they all got to take jobs to care for the kids all their unprotected sex produced. ANTIFA are hippie-wannabes with terrorists tendencies. I honestly don't know why they were allowed to go this far. I guess, thank Obama? Trump's government should already designate them as what they are: a terrorist group. Like the Tupamarus, FARC, or the Shinning Path.

Disagree. There are three trajectories for hippies:

1. They realize the folly of their existence once they leave college or have kids (or both) and join straight society and buy in....

2. They refuse to grow up and dwell on the fringe of society

3. They join straight society, but rather than buy in, they use their new job/position to further preach the hippie anti-life equation protected by their ability to charm people, mommy and daddy's money, and social connections.

The last one is the most dangerous, and it's fitting that the antifas of the late 60s/70s (the Weathermen/Weather Underground) ended up taking university jobs and positioning themselves as the vanguard of their generation of the lunatic left's "long march through the institutions". To the point that Obama himself (through Bill Ayers, one of the chief architects of the Weathermen/Weather Underground) was beholden to these hippies and their plans to take over through a slow moving coup.

 

[CheezzyMach]

This guy is a moron, but I absolutely have to agree that if someone on the right thought of this first they would have tried to pull the exact same shit.

Anyone who thinks tactics like this are only used by whichever party they designate as "the bad guys" are only fooling themselves.

It's the same shit with how people keep insisting that 'the other side' is full of brainwashed morons, and also a minority, but giant corporations are just following what they want because ???. See also, when people supporting the Occupy movement back in the day had their twitter accounts purged en masse.

Pretty much yeah, if the internet had existed in it's current form during the 80s,90s and early 2000s I can almost guarantee the Religious Right would have done this to silence "satanists and degenerates" and the Bush administration would have had no problem unpersoning any Leftist that was critical of the War on Terror.

 

[MirrorNoir]

"Activists" really want a civil war they have absolutely no chance of winning, don't they?

The lunatic left don't technically NEED to cause civil war to get their dream of a Thousand Year SJW Reich. Just keep the super bare minimum first world standard of living quality of life/bread and circuses going and the masses won't rise up and just lay back and take being abused and terrorized.

The only reason they are accelerating shit, is that they got arrogant/greedy after Obama got re-elected and went too far and woke the sleeping masses. However, the masses work too late as the lunatic left already had their infrastructure mostly in place for their Thousand Year SJW Reich (which they would have to burn to the ground if they tactically retreated after overreaching as part of any attempt to get the masses to go back to sleep as far as proof of contrition over what they tried to pull). And now the lunatic left have taken the stance they have no choice but to accelerate further, because Trump's election and the cultural pendulum swinging hard as it has against them made them suddenly realized that their SJW Reich wasn't as inevitable as they convinced themselves it was.

Because, at the end of the day, Paddy Chayefsky's famed "I'm as mad as hell and not going to take it anymore" scene in Network is dead on: in the face of annihilation, the masses will refuse to acknowledge the full extent to which they are being fucked so long as they can hide in their own houses (rented or owned) and numb themselves with the realization that least they have SOME form of bread and circus and car and etc to numb themselves with so they don't have to look out their windowsill see their impending fate as a prole in a dictatorship. It's also why the "we must crash the economy to punish the masses and force them to vote out Trump" meme is so dangerous: Trump may have been a mass rebellion against the lunatic left and their dreams of a Thousand Year SJW Reich, but it was still within the boundaries of the rules society forces everyone to play by. And given the countless cries of "Weimer!!!!!" in relations to America being Weimer 2.0, everyone always forgets that the Great Depression was the inciting incident that gave the Nazis the opening to take over. Weimer was a horrible place but the average person had enough distractions to keep them from hitting the despair event horizon over how fucked shit was. Once the Great Depression hit and the foreign aid that was keeping Weimer Germany from getting WORSE, got cut off? Suddenly there was no more hiding from the truth as everything to got even WORSE and Germany's economy crashed harder than it had earlier in the decade, leaving the opening for Hitler to take over. The normal lefties see that; that Trump's not the devil but if he's removed and everyone has their lives ruined to achieve it? Then the masses who's lives were ruined for daring to rebel by way of electing Trump will say "fuck it" and elect someone who actually IS every evil thing that Trump is accused of being, and that person WILL take powers by doing very, very, very bad things to everyone on the left that destroyed peoples lives in order to seize power and most likely, seize power by overthrowing democracy. A move that the left will have brought upon themselves, in term of creating their own right wing dictatorship which will annihilate them off the face of the earth.

 

[CheezzyMach]

The lunatic left don't technically NEED to cause civil war to get their dream of a Thousand Year SJW Reich. Just keep the super bare minimum first world standard of living quality of life/bread and circuses going and the masses won't rise up and just lay back and take being abused and terrorized.

The only reason they are accelerating shit, is that they got arrogant/greedy after Obama got re-elected and went too far and woke the sleeping masses. However, the masses work too late as the lunatic left already had their infrastructure mostly in place for their Thousand Year SJW Reich (which they would have to burn to the ground if they tactically retreated after overreaching as part of any attempt to get the masses to go back to sleep as far as proof of contrition over what they tried to pull). And now the lunatic left have taken the stance they have no choice but to accelerate further, because Trump's election and the cultural pendulum swinging hard as it has against them, they suddenly realized that their SJW Reich wasn't as inevitable as they convinced themselves it was.

Because, at the end of the day, Paddy Chayefsky's famed "I'm as mad as hell and not going to take it anymore" scene in Network is dead on: in the face of annihilation, the masses will refuse to acknowledge the full extent to which they are being fucked so long as they can hide in their own houses (rented or owned) and numb themselves with the realization that least they have SOME form of bread and circus and car and etc to numb themselves with so they don't have to look out their windowsill see their impending fate as a prole in a dictatorship. It's also why the "we must crash the economy to punish the masses and force them to vote out Trump" meme is so dangerous: Trump may have been a mass rebellion against the lunatic left and their dreams of a Thousand Year SJW Reich, but it was still within the boundaries of the rules society forces everyone to play by. And given the countless cries of "Weimer!!!!!" in relations to America being Weimer 2.0, everyone always forgets that the Great Depression was the inciting incident that gave the Nazis the opening to take over. Weimer was a horrible place but the average person had enough distractions to keep them from hitting the despair event horizon over how fucked shit was. Once the Great Depression hit and the foreign aid that was keeping Weimer Germany from getting WORSE, got cut off? Suddenly there was no more hiding from the truth as everything to got even WORSE and Germany's economy crashed harder than it had earlier in the decade, leaving the opening for Hitler to take over. The normal lefties see that; that Trump's not the devil but if he's removed and everyone has their lives ruined to achieve it? Then the masses who's lives were ruined for daring to rebel against Trump will say "fuck it" and elect someone who actually IS every evil thing that Trump is accused of being, and that person WILL take powers by doing very, very, very bad things to everyone on the left that destroyed peoples lives in order to seize power and most likely, seize power by overthrowing democracy. A move that the left will have brought upon themselves, in term of creating their own right wing dictatorship which will annihilate them off the face of the earth.

TBH I'm surprised Pelosi and the DNC haven't kneecapped the Lunatic/SJW Left yet considering how much damage they continue to do to Leftist causes with their confrontational extremism.

Think 2020-2024 is when they'll begin the culling process? Or will they wear them like an albatross for the next decade like the GOP did the Religous Right in the 90s-00s?

 

[Hux]

TBH I'm surprised Pelosi and the DNC haven't kneecapped the Lunatic/SJW Left yet considering how much damage they continue to do to Leftist causes with their confrontational extremism.

Think 2020-2024 is when they'll begin the culling process? Or will they wear them like an albatross for the next decade like the GOP did the Religous Right in the 90s-00s?

Most likely the latter, but the former depends on how 2020 turns out for them. Pelosi's Neo-Liberal Old Guard of the DNC are holding on by their fingernails to keep the party united with the AOC/Sanders/Omar Progressive New Blood long enough to not cause the long overdue schism before the 2020 election. If Trump wins, it'll be the spark to the DNC powderkeg that will make the GOP's transition from Bush/McCain/Romney Neo-Conservativism to Trump Populism look like a stroll in the park. That will be when the two factions of the DNC start ripping each other apart like starved rats in a cage

Be sure to buy yourself lots and lots of popcorn when November of 2020 comes up

 

[CheezzyMach]

Most likely the latter, but the former depends on how 2020 turns out for them. Pelosi's Neo-Liberal Old Guard of the DNC are holding on by their fingernails to keep the party united with the AOC/Sanders/Omar Progressive New Blood long enough to not cause the long overdue schism before the 2020 election. If Trump wins, it'll be the spark to the DNC powderkeg that will make the GOP's transition from Bush/McCain/Romney Neo-Conservativism to Trump Populism look like a stroll in the park. That will be when the two factions of the DNC start ripping each other apart like starved rats in a cage

Be sure to buy yourself lots and lots of popcorn when November of 2020 comes up

My personal hope as a Blue Dog is the party restructures back to the way it was 10-20 years ago. Drops the Id pol shit and gets back to being for the middle class and workers. But I have a feeling that won't happen so I await the glorious implosion.

 

[break these cuffs]

My personal hope as a Blue Dog is the party restructures back to the way it was 10-20 years ago. Drops the Id pol shit and gets back to being for the middle class and workers. But I have a feeling that won't happen so I await the glorious implosion.

lol that isn't going to happen until the oppression olympics fades out of popular culture.